Moments later I found myself out on the street with little recollection of leaving either my room or my hotel. My mind was filled with questions and worries about the conversation I had just had with Bethany. On the surface were the simple terrors: Should I have told her about the interview? What would happen if she told people at the office? What would Mary do to me if she found out I was looking for a new job? But below that flow were deeper and darker currents: Why had Bethany texted me in the first place? Why was she so upset that I hadn’t told her about the interview? What exactly did that night in Miami Beach mean to her?
It was a cool night, but plenty of people were out and about. My hotel, it seemed, was in a trendy part of Boston, with upscale boutiques and restaurants lining the way. Something about it seemed familiar to me, but my mind was too distracted to make any real connection with it. I could feel my heart sinking and a cold sweat breaking out on my back as I continued to imagine implication after implication.
What, exactly, did Bethany think was going on between us? Sure, we had shared something close, perhaps even intimate, on the beach in Miami, but I distinctly remember our connection being interrupted by two phone calls -- the first from my wife and the second from Caroline Abernathy. I didn’t leave the beach with any lasting impression about Bethany. I only remember running frantically in an attempt to rescue poor Caroline.
My mind had run quickly over the memory of that first phone call from Jenny, but now it skidded to a stop and began to backtrack towards it. Tonight, Bethany had gone distinctly cold when Jenny’s name had come up. Why was that? She was the one reaching out to me behind the back of her spouse. Was I supposed to disclaim all knowledge of my own? We had talked about our marriages dozens, if not hundreds of times -- especially in that concrete bunker in the basement of our office building. Why was tonight any different? What was going on in Bethany’s head? In her heart?
Distracted by these thoughts I accidentally bumped into a passerby. I offered a quick apology, but the person was already gone. Nevertheless the altercation had spun me partially around and I found myself staring at and thinking about something fresh: a street sign, showing that I had arrived at the corner of Newberry and Clarendon Streets.
That gave me pause. Newberry Street. I knew this place. I had been here at least once before. When was it? Had I been to Boston before on business? I must have, I’d been just about everywhere that had a convention center, but I couldn’t put a specific memory on it.
I turned and began walking down Newberry Street itself and then it came to me. I had been here before but not on business. Jenny and I had come here once. We had spent a long weekend here, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, walking the Freedom Trail, and shopping and eating here, on this very street, at that very cafe right over there. It seemed an absolute certainty to me, and yet I still doubted it. How could I not remember that? In all our preparations for this interview, never once had our previous trip to Boston even come up in our conversation. It was true, wasn’t it? I mean, I know it was in those forgotten years after our wedding and before Jacob’s birth, but how could it have slipped both of our minds like this?
I walked up to the cafe that I thought I remembered. There was a chalkboard positioned next to a simple rope line, on the other side of which were small tables with people enjoying coffees and desserts of one kind or another. The chalkboard told me their specials but before I could read them the hostess addressed me.
“Table for one, sir?”
“Huh?” I said, looking up at her, surprised to see that she was impossibly young, surely no older than fifteen or sixteen.
“Do you want a table?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” I said, and then forced myself to stumble away.
It was the cafe we had eaten at, wasn’t it? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Yes, of course, it was, I told myself. It had to be. Because there’s the clothing store I couldn’t drag Jenny out of, and there, farther down the street, there’s the used book store that Jenny couldn’t drag me out of. It was all so familiar and yet so foreign at the same time, as if I was seeing someone else’s memories, or maybe my own memories through someone else’s eyes.
I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed my home number.
“Hello?”
“Jenny, it’s me.”
“Hi! How are you? Is everything all right?”
“Yes. I mean, no. No, I mean, yes. Well, it’s weird.”
“Alan, what’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m on Newberry Street,” I said, giving it special emphasis. “I’m standing across from the cafe where we had coffee and carrot cake in the dim years before Jacob was born. Do you remember that? Do you remember that at all?”
“Oh my God, Alan! What are you doing there?”
“Do you remember?!”
“Of course I remember. How did you get there?”
“It’s just a few blocks from my hotel.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No, neither did I. How is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, in all the time we spent getting me ready for this trip, for this interview tomorrow, booking the flight, booking the hotel, writing the sample interview questions and practicing them -- the whole time we knew I was going to Boston, to the city we had visited and spent some time as newlyweds. How is it possible that neither one of us thought to mention that?”
“Alan, I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“Hey, Boston,” I said, not really talking to her anymore and just kind of talking out loud. “Isn’t that the place we went that one time? You know, that time we saw that Manet exhibit at the art museum and that time we ridiculed of all the idiots in the stupid swan boats and that time we made love in the jacuzzi tub in our hotel suite? You know -- Boston?”
There was no response from the other end of the line, and in that silence I noticed an elderly couple walking past me briskly and giving me some kind of frightened look.
“I’m ranting,” I said. “Aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” Jenny said. “Why don’t you try to calm yourself down? You shouldn’t be getting this upset.”
“But why, Jenny? Why did neither one of us remember? We had fun here.”
“I don’t know, Alan. Life is just so different now. Most days just getting showered and dressed seems like a big accomplishment. We’re busy. We forgot.”
She was right. She usually was. But still, it bothered me -- and I could tell that it bothered me in a way that it didn’t bother her. Probably because I was there and I could see it. I could see the cafe and the clothing store and the used book store, and I could see the people we used to be. There they were. Drinking their coffee and eating their carrot cake and doing their shopping. At one time they had been us -- Jenny and me -- and now we were something else.
“Oh, hey, Alan, one of your staff people called here a few minutes ago.”
That brought me back to myself in a hurry. “What? Who?”
“Bethany Bishop.”
“You spoke to her?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
My mind was racing. “When was this? When did you speak to her?”
“A few minutes ago.”
Yes, a few minutes ago, but how many? Thirty minutes ago? Did thirty count as a few? Because if it was thirty minutes ago then Bethany had called before she started texting me and she was probably just looking for me. But if it was ten minutes ago, and ten could probably more appropriately be called a few, then Bethany had called after she had already spoken to me, and why would she do that? Why would she call my wife? What possible reason could she have for doing that?
“How many minutes ago?”
“Just a few before you called. I thought it was kind of strange.”
So did I. “What did she want?”
“She said you had something she needed. She didn’t seem to know that you were out of town.”
“Jenny,” I said as calmly as I could. “Everybody at work thinks that I’m helping your mother move. Remember? That’s the excuse I gave Mary.”
“Oh my god, Alan. I forgot.”
She forgot. “What did you tell her? Did you tell her I was out of town?”
“No,” Jenny said quickly, almost too quickly. And then she said it again, as if to reassure herself. And then a third time, this time sounding as confident as anything else in her life. “I did not say you were out of town. I just said you were out.”
“Jenny, are you sure?”
“Yes, Alan, I’m sure! I said you were out and that I would take a message.”
“Did she leave one?”
“No. I’m mean, not really. Just that you should call her when you get a chance. And that she needs something you have. She seemed oddly insistent about that. That she needed something from you.”
I stood silently on the street corner, looking at a couple sitting at our cafe, wishing all over again that Jenny and I were them and not the people we were.
“Do you know what she’s talking about? Maybe you should call her?”
“What?”
“Maybe you should call her. If she doesn’t know you’re out of town it’ll look odd if you don’t call her back. Do you know what she’s talking about? What she needs from you?”
“I think so,” I said honestly, and then shifted into a convenient lie. “There’s a project we’re working on together. It’s probably something to do with that. I’ll call her when I get back to the hotel and pretend I’m home, that I was just out getting some groceries or something.”
“OK, that sounds good. I’m sorry, honey, if I screwed something up.”
“It’s okay,” I said, silently noting the irony of her apologizing to me. “It’s nothing, Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. I love you, Alan.”
“I love you, too. I’ll call tomorrow after the interview.”
“Okay. Knock ‘em dead.”
“I will.”
The line clicked off and I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. Call Bethany? I thought to myself. Not on your life. From that moment forward I planned to stay as far away from her as I possibly could.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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